Discovered and uploaded by a user with the nickname f15sim na Internet Archive a copy of the system diskette 86-DOS 0.11. This is the oldest preserved version of DOS, so far it has been possible to extract from old media up to 86-DOS 0.34, which already served as the basis for licensed systems MS-DOS a PC DOSdeveloped by Microsoft for the IBM PC.
With the new find, the annals must also be rewritten. Until now, it was thought that the name 86-DOS did not come until version 0.2, and the first versions were called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System). However, a surviving working copy of the 5.25″ floppy shows that the number 86 referring to the Intel 8086 processors was already in the previous August 1980 build.
The author of QDOS and 86-DOS is Tim Paterson, who worked on it at Seattle Computer Products. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, SCP produced hardware, but then got a taste for software as well. DOS borrowed heavily from Garry Kildall’s CP/M system.
It’s hard to find a compatible computer to run 86-DOS these days, but you can run it a bit complicated with SIMH emulator. Or you can just watch a short video of the NTDEV YouTube channel, which has already tried this historical artifact.
The system read only nine files at the time, two of which were occupied by text chess (one game, one manual). Of course, there is command.com for executing commands. Others are mainly related to programming, because at that time whoever wanted some software for a new operating system and a new hardware platform had to write it first.
2024-01-03 13:45:10
#oldest #predecessor #MSDOS #operating #system #looked
